girls day.

Growing up the highlight of my year was Girls Day.  

It was the stuff dreams were made of. 

It signified the start of the Christmas season and I lived for it. 

The Friday after Thanksgiving my mom gathered my sisters and any combination of aunts, cousins or other women in our lives and we would head into San Francisco for a day of shopping and fun. It wasn't until I was older that I understood the origins of our ever growing tradition. 

When I was too little to really be aware my mom was a single mom of two little girls, broke as a joke, trying to make ends meet. Holidays were nerve wracking I'm sure. In an effort to make something special out of the holiday season she would take my little sister and me on a BART ride up to San Francisco. We would hop off at the Powell Street station, stop to grab a warm street pretzel and watch the street performers bang their buckets and do their thing. Brake dancing was big-I remember stopping to watch head spinning on slabs of cardboard at nearly every corner. 



She would give us both a few dollars-like maybe literally five bucks to spend. At the time it felt like the biggest treat ever. Five whole dollars to spend on ourselves? We had hit the jackpot. We would check out the Hello Kitty store with their pens and tempting little gum packets but inevitably save most of our dollars for our trip to Woolworth's-the OG five and dime store. I honestly cannot recall a single thing I ever bought there with my coveted Girls Day dollars but I do remember feeling so rich and so spoiled. Just seeing the Woolworth sign coming around the corner was enough to make me giddy. 

On a recent solo weekend to San Francisco coming up out of the BART station on Powell I had to catch my breath for a moment as it all flooded back. There it was. The Woolworth building in all it's glory. Woolworth has long been gone but the sign still stood, the building still graced Powell with all it's stature and it was like being that little girl again holding tight to her five dollars dressed in her Goodwill coat and mittens in awe of the big city around her.


As we grew up, Girls Day did too. It became an annual pilgrimage full of aunts and girl cousins occasionally friends and girls day adoptees. At times we even outgrew San Francisco and as my mom's life became more financially successful our Girls Days became more extravagant. At one point we traveled with MY little girls to Chicago first class for a whirlwind weekend filled with American Girl Doll store fun and well more than $5 in their little pockets. 

But when push comes to shove,
the Girls Days I cherish most
included warm pretzels,
five single dollar bills
and the Woolworth store. 

Thank you for that mom.
You did good.
And I love you. 

-McGee